CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 01:27 PM –
Posted by Michael Hunter Schwartz

I am in search of the best law teachers in this country, and I could use your help. I have the extraordinary opportunity to conduct a law professor-focused, follow-up study to Ken Bain’s wonderful WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS DO (Harvard University Press, 2004).

Thus, this posting is a solicitation of nominations. In particular, I am looking for teachers who consistently produce extraordinary learning, who change their students’ lives and whose instruction stays with students long after they graduate from law school.

I hope what I produce inspires you as much as Professor Bain’s work has inspired me. Over the next three years, I will be:
** soliciting nominations;
** gathering evidence of nominees’ excellence;
** paring the list of nominees to the most extraordinary law teachers; and then
** visiting law schools around the country, sitting in on classes, interviewing the nominees, and talking to focus groups of students and alumni; and then publishing what I have found in a book: WHAT THE BEST LAW TEACHERS DO (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2011).

I have set up a web nomination process (although I will also accept nominations by phone, by e-mail, by regular mail, or in person). To nominate a candidate or learn more about this project, please go to http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers. Click on the link on the right side of the page to get to the nomination form.

To honor those who have been nominated, I have set up a website on which I will report the name of each nominee, the nominee’s institutional affiliation, and a few comments from the nominator. Here’s a link to that website: http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers/ … index.php.

I hope to gather as many nominations as possible, so I would appreciate any efforts to forward this message to your colleagues, listservs, students, and alumni. If you are a blogger, please post this information on your blog.

Feel free to e-mail me at michael.schwartz@washburn.edu if you have any questions. The names of nominators and nominees will be withheld upon request.